CAPTAIN-NORTON (Newington, W.)I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, with regard to the two staff clerks in the Admiralty recently promoted to the higher division, will he state what immediate advantage they derived from such promotion to compensate for the reduction of their salaries which they suffered in consequence; and, whether he can quote any precedents for reducing the salaries of permanent officials on their promotion to higher posts which were open to them by the regulations under which they were serving?
§ MR. HANBURYThe hon. Member appears to assume that the two staff clerks were forced to accept promotion to the upper division. This of course was not the case. The choice lay entirely with them, and doubtless they chose to be promoted in the belief that the prospective advantages counterbalanced the immediate loss of salary. The question is not one of precedent but of the public interest. The clerks in question had been till a year and a half ago ordinary second division clerks, and were then appointed to staff posts at salaries almost double of those they had been drawing. It is not the intention of the Government, and it was certainly not the intention of the 534 Ridley Commission, to allow such highly paid staff posts to become a lever for introducing second division clerks into the upper division at salaries so disproportionately high as compared with the initial salaries of the clerks who entered the upper division by open competition in the ordinary way.